Orange Money teamed up with Visa to push virtual cards across Africa and the Middle East, and the partnership already went live in Botswana, Madagascar, Jordan, and the Ivory Coast before expanding into Guinea, Burkina Faso, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Users can spin up virtual Visa cards through the Max it app that pull funds straight from Orange Money accounts for online shopping on local and international sites, with physical cards dropping at authorized retailers later.
The companies want to crack financial inclusion wide open for people who got shut out of traditional banking, and Orange Money CEO Thierry Millet said their 45 million customers can already pay at physical stores but now get access to international online...
MSI dropped its MEG X870E GODLIKE X Edition motherboard into stores for 1,300 dollars in America and roughly 1,200 euros across Europe with tax baked in, and the company basically threw every feature possible at AMD's top-tier chipset without caring about normal people's budgets. The board competes against other ridiculous options like the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Extreme for enthusiasts who refuse to compromise on anything.
Connectivity gets pushed to the max with USB4 hitting 40 Gbps, dual Ethernet running 10 GbE and 5 GbE, plus Wi-Fi 7 and premium audio chips that eliminate external sound cards. Storage capacity goes wild through multiple M.2 slots and a dedicated riser card, while the power delivery system handles current Ryzen...
iRobot just crashed into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and Picea Robotics swooped in to grab all the debt and equity to take the Roomba maker private. The Massachusetts company that basically invented robot vacuums for normal people got wrecked by cheaper competition flooding the market, and their attempts to trim costs could not stop the bleeding.
Picea already builds most of the Roomba units anyway, so the takeover makes sense from a manufacturing angle, but a bankruptcy judge still needs to sign off before anything becomes official. Customer support and products should keep rolling during the transition, though the new owners will decide where the brand goes next.
The whole situation shows how quickly hardware companies can collapse when...
ASUS plans to drop new Dual EVO graphics cards built around the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 chips that swap in a physical PCIe x8 slot instead of the usual x16 setup. The cards still work in regular x16 slots without tanking gaming performance, but the change lets ASUS simplify the circuit board and cut manufacturing costs. The power connector also got moved closer to the back panel for easier cable management in tight builds.
The Dual EVO models keep the dual-fan cooler that ASUS uses across its budget lineup and should land cheaper than the TUF Gaming and ROG Strix versions with shorter boards and less bulky heatsinks. Clock speeds and pricing remain under wraps, but the design choices signal these cards target people who want...
LG smart TVs started forcing Microsoft Copilot onto users through a webOS update that treats the AI assistant like core system software instead of a regular app you can delete. The software stays embedded even after factory resets, and owners can only hide the icon while the program keeps running in the background. Microsoft and LG have been working together to jam more AI features into televisions for content recommendations and voice commands.
People are losing it over the lack of control since the update downloads automatically when TVs connect to the internet, and privacy settings only disable some tracking without actually removing Copilot. The only way to avoid the assistant completely involves keeping the television offline...
National Tyre Services is bouncing from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange after bleeding cash for years, and the company will officially peace out at the end of the month to become the 38th firm to ditch the bourse. The tire business got wrecked by a 121.19 million ZiG loss and basically stopped trading shares for most of the year, with eight months seeing zero activity and volumes staying pathetic when anything moved.
Power outages tanked factory output to about 30 percent capacity and killed an estimated 40 percent of projected sales across branches. Shareholders voted to approve the exit after regulators signed off, and management thinks going private will help the operation survive Zimbabwe's economic mess without dealing with listing...
OK, Zimbabwe is trying to offload another 17.2 million dollars in real estate after already planning to dump 10.5 million worth of buildings, as the retailer gets crushed by working capital problems that are keeping shelves empty. The company already raised 20 million dollars and paid suppliers half their old debts, but stores still cannot stock enough products because trading terms are terrible and money stays tight.
Revenue got absolutely demolished by 84 percent to just 28.26 million dollars, while the business racked up a 17.81 million dollar loss and stayed technically broke with 47 cents available for every dollar owed short-term. Chairman Herbert Nkala said power costs hit 5.3 million dollars alone because electricity keeps...
The Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries dropped survey results showing that most companies are getting wrecked on profits, with 44 percent reporting smaller margins compared to 41 percent that actually grew during a nine-month stretch. Average revenue only went up 2.4 percent across 514 firms, and businesses blamed import competition, cash problems, power outages, and policy chaos for the struggles.
Medium-sized operations did better than everyone else, with 55 percent posting gains, while half of the small firms took losses. Agriculture and horticulture saw 48 percent of companies growing profits, but wholesale, retail, financial, and ICT sectors got hammered, with 54 percent reporting declines. Job creation stayed weak, with...
Nelson Chamisa told supporters at a Harare fundraiser that he plans to launch a new political party that could actually take down ZANU-PF, with the former opposition leader pushing back against critics who said he bailed on the Citizens Coalition for Change. His crew has apparently been working with communities offline to build something real for a 2026 rollout, and Chamisa made it clear that ZANU-PF internal votes about extending Mnangagwa through 2030 do not count as actual law.
The guy addressed rumors about leaving the country by asking why anyone would bounce when things are heating up, and he basically said the colleagues who ditched him did him a favor by showing their true colors. Insiders say the focus is not just winning...
